Ryan's plan a predicament for GOP

For a class of Republicans elected last year as hard-charging fiscal conservatives, the trial by fire has arrived.

The dramatic 2012 spending plan unveiled Tuesday by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan amounts to a test of political will for the GOP’s most vulnerable lawmakers, some of them only a few months into their maiden terms.

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The decision before them boils down to this: Will they stake their seats on a risky vote to overhaul the federal budget, including the popular Medicare entitlement program?

So far, the most popular answer is: maybe.

“I am still looking over the details of the chairman’s proposal,” Rep. Bobby Schilling, a surprise 2010 winner from western Illinois, said in a statement. “Though I may not agree with every proposed cut, I am glad an open dialogue about our nation’s fiscal crisis is taking place.”

A spokeswoman for Blake Farenthold, one of the most endangered members of the historic freshman class, said the congressman is “concerned about making sure that cuts are in line with his commitment to South Texans” and “does not have a firm position on the Ryan budget bill as he is reading through it.”

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy called Ryan’s plan a “bold proposal” yet stopped short of endorsing it. New York Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, elected last November to an upstate swing district, praised Ryan’s blueprint as “serious” but added that she’ll be “reviewing the proposal in more detail.”

Another upstate New York freshman, Rep. Richard Hanna, said he’ll “spend the next several days studying chairman Ryan’s proposal and other budgets offered by my colleagues.”

Either a sudden surge of studiousness is sweeping through battleground districts, or these Republicans can smell the danger.

There’s plenty of reason to be cautious: An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month showed fewer than a quarter of Americans supported cutting funds for Medicare and fewer than a third wanted to cut Medicaid — numbers that Republican pollster Bill McInturff called a “huge flashing yellow sign to Republicans.”

And Democrats are openly cheering the prospect of a 2012 election fought over entitlements. Within hours of Ryan’s budget release, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee branded it a “privatization scheme” that would result in “ending Medicare.”